Literary Criticism and Creative Nonfiction

FOUND WANTING:A MEMOIR OF MISREADING

When I was 17 and attending my Jesuit high school in Detroit, I read Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. And then, at midlife, I read it again. Found Wanting tells the story of those two readings.

Part literary memoir, part reappraisal of a literary classic, part skeptical look at the idea of art as a privileged pathway to personal transformation, Found Wanting is an extended reflection on the experience of reading, misreading, and rereading—both on the page and in life.